It is Guan Eng who brought this upon himself to save his flagging and scandal-laden career, dragging the party along with him through the mud to deliver the impression that the federal government was trying to cripple the DAP
THE THIRD FORCE
PENANG: “Those representatives in 2012, have all changed now. Some have left the party and some are no more. For example, our late former chairman of DAP, Karpal Singh.
“He is no more, so are we to go ask Karpal Singh to come back to cast his vote?”
Those were the words of Lim Guan Eng, uttered at a press conference here earlier today to address a directive by the Registrar of Societies (RoS) for the DAP to conduct fresh polls.
On Friday, the RoS adjudged the party’s current Central Executive Committee (CEC) line-up to be illegal on account of polls conducted by the party in 2012 and 2013, which the statutory body says were botched and refuses to recognize.
The 2012 election earned the wrath of party members following reports that 700-odd delegates were deliberately denied invitation letters to the party’s 16th national congress, in what amounted to a complicity by the party’s leadership to rig the CEC election.
According to complainants, the party had allowed some 547 illegal delegates to cast ballots in their place, with reports going so far as to claim that the ballots were half complete to allow Guan Eng and members of his ‘inner circle’ to mark their choice contestants into power.
Following months of back and forth between the DAP and the RoS, the party held a re-election in September 2013, allowing the same 547 illegal delegates to cast ballots and denying the same 700-odd eligible delegates from voting.
The DAP refused to submit comprehensive minutes of the 2013 electoral process despite repeated requests by the RoS, denying the statutory body an avenue of recourse to settle disputes between disgruntled party members and the CEC amicably.
All evidence points to the idea that Guan Eng had deliberately contrived the entire fiasco to prolong his term as secretary-general, which, according to Barisan Nasional’s Dato’ Eric See-To, should have expired last year.
“In 2003, DAP imposed a three-term limit of three years each for the post of secretary-general.
“Lim Guan Eng was elected as secretary-general in the party elections of 2004 and again in August 2008,” Eric said, adding, if either the 2012 election or the 2013 re-election were recognised, Guan Eng would have completed his third and final term by the end of last year.
It is highly likely that the DAP secretary-general evoked the memory of Karpal Singh in a bid to fan sentiments against the RoS, possibly implying that the statutory body had waged a vendetta against him and the party.
Question is, what does it matter to the people or the RoS if Karpal is dead or alive insofar as the CEC controversy is concerned?
It is Guan Eng who brought this upon himself to save his flagging and scandal-laden career, dragging the party along with him through the mud to deliver the impression that the federal government was trying to cripple the DAP.
